Hello miket, mikky, new member here! I started Shotokan Karate just before xmas just gone, and was told by some in my class that Tai Chi would be beneficial to my Karate. Just after xmas, my wife and i did in fact join a Tai Chi class and some members there said that my Karate would be benefical to my Tai Chi!!

Being new to these two forms of the Martial Arts, i have no way of knowing just yet if they compliment each other or not, and neither do i know of these 'combative applications' within the Tai Chi movements/forms. (Though i CAN see some blocks that are familiar in Karate.) I am just enjoying the training right now and as yet have no expertise in either MA, so far be it for me to comment on something i know nothing about!

I was quite surprised when my Sensei at Karate told me that HE had just started practising Tai Chi, though it is a different 'style' to the one i practise.

Oddly enough, it was a Taijiquan book on chin na that started me on my own journey to discover the "real" bunkai to my Shotokan many years ago. I had already learned the kata Jitte, and I got the usual explanation for the name being "if you master this kata you will have the strength of 10 men/10 hands". Then I acquired a book by Yang, Jwing-Ming called "Taiji Chin Na". In case you aren't aware, chin na means basically "seize and control". These are primarily joint locking/takedown techniques in Taijiquan and Shaolin systems. In the introduction to the book, I learned that Southern White Crane was one primary influence on Okinawan karate, and that Taijiquan is also related to White Crane. Then I found a technique in the book on page 215 called "Shi Zi Shou" which the author translated as "cross hands". Now, looking at the Chinese characters for the name of the technique, which is a kind of elbow wrapping joint lock/immobilization, I could see the kanji for the number 10 in it. This peaked my interest, so I went over the kata Jitte again and sure enough, in one part of the beginning section of the kata there is a similar position. The number 10 in Chinese characters looks like...an equilateral cross! And although the author had translated the name as "cross hands", the name really means "the number 10 hands", and he only translated it as cross hands because that was the real meaning, i.e. "the technique wherein your hands form the shape of the Chinese symbol for the number 10, which looks like a cross".

From there on out, I was hooked, trying to find "hidden" bunkai in the kata :)